IEM -

Making your environment
a safer and cleaner place to live.

by

This issue we look at IEM,
an environmental services company who at this year's Business Excellence
Awards became the first winner of the TCCC's Green Award, given to a
company, which demonstrates exemplary environmental practices, and a
commitment to community environmental awareness. Partners Ron Livingston
and Randy Shaw run IEM, and its mission is to provide the most appropriate
management, technological and scientifically proven solutions to the
field of natural resource and environmental management.

Ron, a resident of Thailand, is
one of the most hard-working and visible TCCC members, and he has been mentioned
many times in Voyageur. He has been a board member since 1997, vice-president
since 1999, and a winner of the TCCC's 'Entrepreneur of the Year' in 1998.
His partner, and IEM's Technical Director, Randy Shaw, however, is somewhat
lesser known.

Randy grew up in Edmonton where
he received a Bachelor's degree in zoology at the University of Alberta
in 1981. He started his professional career with Alberta Environment, where
his job duties included investigating the water quality of lakes and rivers
in northern Alberta. He then won a post-graduate scholarship and returned
to the University of Alberta, where in 1989 he finished a PhD studying the
relationship between hydrogeology (water below the ground) and limnology
(surface water), or more specifically how chemicals from the ground water
seep into the surface water. During his PhD studies he also formed a company,
which focused on water quality issues.

In 1991, Randy moved to Calgary
to join a larger environmental called Environment Management Associates,
which in turn a couple years later was bought by Golder Associates, an international
engineering and environmental company. Randy started with Golder as a senior
scientist and rose through the ranks to become a Principal of the company.
But as time wore on, Randy became increasingly frustrated with what he saw
as a huge amount of money being spent on relatively minor environmental
issues in Canada. So when he heard that Golder was thinking of expanding
to Thailand, he jumped at the chance and in 1997 he was posted here to start
up BTG-Golder.

After building up a very successful
operation here, Randy left Golder in late 2000 to join Ron Livingston as
a Partner at IEM. Ron was one of the first people Randy had met when he
started coming to Thailand, and it was natural for Randy to seek out Ron's
advice as Ron had been running his own consultancy firm here for years -
he knew the ins and outs of the business. Even though they were potential
competitors, they quickly established a good relationship, and they soon
even started working together on projects. And the first big project BTG-Golder
took here was a joint venture with IEM, an Environmental Impact assessment
(EIA) for Trans-Canada Pipelines.

As Ron and Randy are Partners
they make all the decisions on projects, budgets, management, staff
and resources together. And as Technical Director, Randy reviews all
the technical aspects of projects and is active in the day-to-day management
of projects as well.

A typical project that IEM works on is an EIA, which can take anywhere from
a couple of months to a year to perform. Under Thai law, when certain types
of projects like oil and gas developments, new industrial facilities, pipelines
and major roads are undertaken an EIA is required. So the project manager
hires a consultant that is approved by the Thai government to perform an
EIA, and Randy and Ron are both designated by the Thai government as EIA
experts. (The EIAs go through an approval process where after being completed
they are checked by both a government agency and an independent body; and
if the team putting together the EIA doesn't follow proper procedure they
could be blacklisted from future projects). And when a project goes south,
the consultants usually get blamed.

As a consultant, IEM tries to help
developers build projects that minimize any negative impacts on the environment
and to people living near the project. It also comes up with mitigation
plans, which help minimize the negative aspects of a development and enhance
the positive ones. It does this through experience, professional judgment
and the scientific analysis of data collected for the project.

Basically IEM services multinational
companies, the Thai government, Thai industry and international development
organizations. Its work can be broken down into EIAs, onshore and offshore
monitoring; socio-economic studies; audits (environmental, health and safety
or compliance); ISO 14000 implementation; and environmental, health and
safety training. Its onshore monitoring includes taking air, water and soil
samples, while its offshore monitoring includes coral surveys, environmental
reconnaissance, fish surveys and sediment sampling. And its socio-economic
studies include attitude surveys, focus group discussions, community awareness
programs and community involvement programs.

Here's where it gets somewhat
confusing though. Ron and Randy don't just run IEM, they also run Redlog,
a contracting company, which deals with clean up, risk assessment and
soil remediation. And they run Oil Spill Response Thailand (OSRT), which
serves Thailand's oil and gas industry, and is designed to minimize
marine and coastal damage caused by oil spills. So they really have
three major core businesses.

So IEM is Ron and Randy's environmental
consulting arm in Asia. Right now it is working on projects in Thailand,
Malaysia, Cambodia and Japan, and typically what it does is produce a report
to help a client get a permit, or identify issues at one of their factories
to minimize negative impacts.

Redlog focuses primarily on aquatic remediation technologies, so if there
is site that has contaminated water, or contaminated sediment under the
water, it has the technology to clean it up. One of the technologies Redlog
employs is called in situ bio remediation technology (IBT). This is a Canadian
technology developed by scientists at Environment Canada and exclusively
licensed by Environment Canada for Redlog's use in Asia and the Middle East.

The technology is currently being
used in Hong Kong in the Shing Mun River, where a chemical amendment is
injected into the river sediments with the goal of reducing odors arising
from hydrogen sulphate production. It's also been used to help clean up
Hamilton Harbor and is being tested in Lake Biwa, Japan's largest freshwater
lake, where it's being used to suppress phosphorous from sediments. In another
site in the US it's been used to reduce the toxicity of polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are nasty organic chemicals. And in Kuwait and
Saudi Arabia, it's being studied as way to reduce concentrations of oil
spilled on to beaches during the first Gulf War.

And ORST is a joint venture with
a US-based oil spill response organization. It provides 24 hour a day emergency
response support services to the offshore oil and gas industry here in Thailand.
These services include oil spill response plans, modeling and response training,
and equipment and logistic support to companies like Chevron and Unocal.
And with funding from CIDA-INC, ORST is also working on a feasibility study
to set up a similar program in Cambodia, called OSRC.

If there happened to be a major
spill, OSRT would set up a command center at the company's headquarters
and predict where the spill was going. Then it would start working on mitigation
support as companies deemed responsible for spills tend to get sued by everyone
for everything. So the OSRT would help mobilize people and equipment to
clean up the spill. It also supports the company to protect it against liabilities
by assessing and monitoring actual environmental impact. This is done by
collecting video evidence, and taking water quality and sediment samples,
and documenting any actual damage. The Thai government has adopted a methodology
for costing impacts to the environment in these cases and the OSRT understands
this methodology clearly and provides evidence on the side of the company
to protect its interests.

IEM has also joined the Inogen
Environmental Alliance, a new concept of global environmental delivery
service. This allows it to remain a small business but access global
markets, and get new types of jobs, with its Inogen partners.

And last but not least, the company
runs the website www.environmentalthailand.com,
which is still under development. It's an information portal for environmental
issues, which provides free information and a membership component, which
allows people access to environmental legislation, regulations and guidelines
in Thailand as well as other environmental, health and safety management
tools.

What sets IEM and its fellow companies apart is that they provide international
quality services and they understand the local marketplace requirements
as well as the local regulatory and cultural issues, which are so important
in operating effectively in Thailand.

Ron and Randy and their crew have
prepared health assessment guidelines for the Office of Natural Resources
and Environmental Policy for use in all new EIAs. They have also contributed
to the environmental codes of practice for Thailand's upstream hydrocarbon
industry. And for the Pollution Control Department, they have also developed
a research program for the prevention and reduction of risk to human health
and the environment.

They are constantly working on
novel ways to deliver their services more efficiently. They help clients
develop policy and strategy to better enable them to bring their projects
forward.

Ed note: It should also be pointed
that IEM has a very active internship program, and is currently working
a with Memorial University in Newfoundland, whereby interns would come to
work for IEM for a year to gain valuable experience, and in many cases once
their internship is up, IEM offers them a job.